Oceanside 
The public Tri-City Healthcare District board of directors on Thursday backed away from its attempt to grant itself the power to remove elected board members from office.

By a 4-2 vote on April 26, the board had added ouster as a penalty for disruptive board members, prompting questions about the legality of a board removing an elected official from office.

The unanimous decision Thursday retracted those changes.

The removal penalty was largely aimed at Director Kathleen Sterling, who has been characterized by others on the board and hospital administrators as disruptive.

“We’ve had a tarnish on this board because of this conduct,” Chairwoman RoseMarie Reno said. “The people will decide by vote what they will do with this distraction.”

Mary Crowley, president of the League of Women Voters of North County San Diego, encouraged the board to leave such decisions in the hands of voters.

“We are here simply to remind you that, barring a conviction after trial, we the voters should decide who should come and who should go on this board,” Crowley said.

Tri-City Director Larry Schallock, in the vote last month, opposed granting the board the ability to kick out disruptive members.

“It doesn’t matter how frustrating it is, how angry we get,” Schallock said. “If you remove someone, even though you think it’s a good cause, if it’s not a legal cause, you are talking about disenfranchising 30, 40, 50,000 voters.”

Director Charlene Anderson made the motion to undo the changes to the policy, although she supported the rationale.

“It’s a hard thing to do to set a precedent where none has been since 1905,” Anderson said, “but it’s a harder thing to wrestle with such disruption that you can’t conduct the business of the (health care district).”

Tri-City attorney Greg Moser had defended the legality of the ouster policy by citing a case from 1905 in which three California legislators were ousted for accepting bribes.